"The Black Phone" Proves Horror Can Be More than Cheap Thrills

Scott Derrickson's passion project is infinitely more than it appears.

July 11, 2022

On October 22, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, his younger brother, Trevor (10), and his friend, Aaron (11), rented The Naked Gun from a convenience store, stocked up on snacks, and started biking home. Suddenly, a man wearing a mask popped out from a driveway carrying an unloaded gun: he ordered the boys to throw their bikes in the ditch and lie face down, then asked each child their age. Trevor was too young and got instructed to leave, told that if he turned back, he would get shot. The man then told Jacob and Aaron to show him their faces; he preferred Jacob. Aaron got ordered to run away under the same threat as Trevor.

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It was the last time Jacob was seen alive.

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Jacob’s disappearance rocked his small Minnesota town and tortured his family. A statewide investigation unveiled a similar case where a 12-year-old boy, Jared Scheierl, got kidnapped and molested. Although horrifying, Jared's survival inspired hope that Jacob was alive: nearly three decades later, that hope died.

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Danny Heinrich got questioned by the FBI in December of 1989 and submitted a DNA sample, which the feds matched to the Scheierl case in 2015. The statute of limitations had expired, but a judge signed a search warrant, allowing the feds to search Heinrich’s home, where they found child pornography and arrested him. As part of a plea deal, he agreed to lead them to Wetterling’s burial site. On September 6, 2016, nearly 27 years after murdering Jacob, he allocuted in open court: he handcuffed the boy and drove him to a gravel pit; the terrified Jacob asked Heinrich what he had done wrong and begged to get taken home. Heinrich refused, molested him, killed him, and buried his body.

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Another part of the deal was the prosecution’s agreement not to charge Heinrich with Jacob’s murder. He is currently serving a 20-year sentence on one of the 25 federal counts of child pornography with which he got charged.

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We exhale at the long-awaited resolution of a decades-old mystery, one whose conclusion was inevitable but unknown nonetheless. Few worse fates exist than being unable to confirm the suspected; getting teased with hope is cruel. Even when all gets revealed, the book closes in a way that can be hard to accept: Heinrich is in prison for a crime that sees men guillotined in the court of public opinion, but after everything the Wetterling family went through - three decades of devastation, hope, longing, and agony - leaving Jacob's death legally unpunished feels wrong.

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In that way, The Black Phone provides us a sense of justice that even solved cases can lack. Its central character, Finney, the presumptive latest victim of a serial killer known as "The Grabber," is not much older than Wetterling. One day, while walking home from school, he stops to help a man who's spilled his groceries; his kindness gets him kidnapped, thrown in the back of a van, and locked in a soundproofed basement.

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Cinematically, The Black Phone’s success is working its 70s setting into its horror. Kids today are constantly connected to the outside world and the one they inhabit. They can access reality at the drop of a hat and live in a society jaded by tragedies that former generations did not process. Everyone knows of Wetterling or even more modern disappearances when technology did not allow things to get shrouded in mystery. The aura surrounding them lets us project and concoct theories that are far more complex than the likely outcome. Reality is plainer than we’d like to admit, but simplicity is scarier.

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A movie can never relay the horror a person feels in their final moments. We can weep for the dead, but intense sympathy is not understanding. The Black Phone rewards us not by feigning empathy but by understanding the need our sympathy creates. Finney’s triumph is an exercise in personal growth; he got bullied at school and abused at home, flustered in front of cute girls, and overwhelmed at the sight of violence, refusing to rejoice in the retribution his friend exacts on a school bully. By film’s end, he’s not a foundationally changed person; he’s only learned a life lesson he was destined to learn. It can take decades for some, but we all realize that we must take a stand to get what we want and deserve. Finney wants and deserves to live; he must take his friend’s advice and stand up for himself if he wants to make it out alive.

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The Black Phone accomplishes all this with a concept that shouldn’t work. In a small town plagued by a series of suspected kidnappings, why does no one bat an eye at a creepy black van roaming around town (though, in fairness, it was the 70s)? How does The Grabber’s brother not check his basement if he’s sure he was hiding something down there? Why is there a phone in the basement? If it “doesn’t work,” why not get rid of it? If The Grabber can hear it but refuses to believe, why not get rid of this bizarre telephone taunting you with its supernatural qualities? Every call inspires an escape attempt that should get snuffed out the moment Finney lays the groundwork. We’re never sure how he digs so much without getting caught or why The Grabber doesn’t inspect the room every time he enters. How does he never find the bars Finney ripped from the windows?

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It’s the chinks that, when isolated, are difficult to ignore. Finney’s sister, Gwen, has the same dream visions that drove the children’s deceased mother to suicide: Gwen's offer pieces of The Grabber puzzle that are theoretically vital to finding her brother. The film spends the opening act establishing her as the determined, incorrigible young girl with a penchant for sass. We’ve seen her in different ways and to varying degrees, most notably with Game of Thrones’ Arya Stark, who always rang false.

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The insincerity renders her foundation forced; thus, all the dialogue feels stilted and clunky, as though hours got spent conceiving the perfect PG insult for her to launch at incompetent detectives. Unfortunately, the film’s ending twist and Finney’s character arc render her irrelevant. The story doesn’t belong to her but includes her for inclusion's sake. She gets forced into being the one to which a younger audience (that would likely not gravitate towards the film) can attach, the spit-fire who defies authority before leading them by the hand with resourcefulness and courage. It can entertain those positively predisposed but cannot hold itself up against the reality of its home: Finney is the movie in every way that counts and allows it to distinguish itself.

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Few films can weave a character arc into horror; the genre relies on terror, not growth. The purpose of horror is to impede growth; people die before they can evolve or get forced into specific circumstances over and over. Modifications to those circumstances necessitate shifts in approach, and thus the person we follow can change, but that requires a franchise. Scream’s Sidney Prescott is not the same person in her first outing as in the others, but each film was a necessary step in her development. A single horror movie will struggle to offer that opportunity; The Black Phone does not know that struggle. It may not be the most original, but it’s natural because it understands adolescence.

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We all know what it means to be insecure, afraid, and alone, but we also know that confronting those things at a young age is a different animal. Finney does not deal with his troubles in an unfamiliar way; many kids get bullied, many are awkward around the sex to which they are attracted, and many suffer through abusive childhoods. The Black Phone draws us to its protagonist because he is so ordinary. Finney’s only friend told him a simple truth about life: you must stand up for yourself. When the moment comes, Finney seizes it; that refusal to give up after so many failed escape attempts, the fortitude to confront his fears without hesitation, is the film’s backbone.

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Alas, it is still a horror movie and has to offer what all films of its genre must and does without buckling under convention. It doesn’t rely on jump scares or gore, only the sadism of its villain and the youth of its protagonist. After a visit to the basement, The Grabber departs but leaves the door unlocked. An adult may have sensed the ploy and knew to stay downstairs and bide their time, but adolescents are more reactive. Finney notices the door, and his instincts are to run. A timely phone call from a deceased victim urges him not to fall into the trap: he says The Grabber is waiting at the top of the stairs; should Finney try to escape, he’ll get whipped with a belt. The whole truth is even more horrifying: The Grabber has stripped off his shirt and sits in a chair several feet from the staircase to the basement, mask on and belt in hand. He waits, not just for the moth to come to the flame but for the moment of realization: he wants the child to react, to turn and see that it was a ruse and that the punishment for falling victim to it is a bloody beating. Much of the horror is based on what we can infer about the extent of The Grabber’s sadism; the movie serves itself well by ensuring we make those inferences.

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It makes every call seem like a rush to Finney’s aid and a step towards justice for the murdered boys. The victims come in various ways: shy, reserved, violent, aggressive, cool, nerdy, tall, athletic, meek; one is even a martial artist. Knowing the extent of their murderer’s brutality helps us connect the dots between people who never would have connected in life. It’s an unfortunate truth: sometimes we can only find unity in tragedy; The Black Phone conveys both the forlornness of that reality and the triumph a young boy can find in embracing it to exact revenge.

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Alas, all the craftsmanship in the world cannot substitute for substance; The Black Phone is a reminder that genre does not define capacity. Horror can create compelling characters, even if it chooses the wrong ones to maximize; it does not need to shock the audience or manipulate its atmosphere to be frightening: circumstances can often stand without a crutch. It’s an ode to justice that many never get and salvation few in Finney’s predicament ever find. Finney will live, unlike Jacob Wetterling and many children victimized by sadists. A movie can never bring them back, but even if only put to celluloid, it’s nice to see a victory for the victim.